


Puzzle Pieces

by writelights (orphan_account)



Category: 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Childhood Sexual Abuse, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:38:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13037997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/writelights
Summary: Only broken people have the power to break people, after all.





	Puzzle Pieces

Alexander Hamilton was thirteen the first time he kissed a boy.

Theodore Leverson, behind the schoolhouse on a Tuesday evening in late May. They had been flirting back and forth for weeks, and it was the obvious next step in their relationship. His lips were soft, Alexander’s were chapped. His lips tasted like honey and hope, Alexander’s tasted like butterscotch and the sadness of a boy who had lost everything. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle, like thunder and lightning.

They dabbled like that for awhile. Alexander and Theodore had many firsts together. First kiss, first blowjob, first everything. Everything except sex, that is. They weren’t ready for that, they were only thirteen, after all. But alas, they soon grew out of it. Theodore fell for a girl and left Alexander in the dust, a mere experiment of his early teenage years. First heartbreak, you can add that to the list too.

With Sarah Atlee came more firsts, this time with a woman. The first time Alexander kissed a woman, the first time he loved a woman, and yes, the first time he bedded a woman. She was beautiful, with golden hair and eyes the color of a restless sea. Everything he could have wanted in a girl, and yet she wasn’t enough.

They yelled at each other until they were hoarse. It seemed like all they did was fight, and when they weren’t fighting they were either fucking or completely ignoring each other. She was cruel to him. She called him names, manipulated him, and so much more. And when he finally came up with the courage to leave her, she called him a bastard and told him she wished she’s never laid eyes on him. He left her house crying, wishing he’d never been born.

By now Alexander was fifteen, alone, vulnerable, and terrified.

James Gillett took advantage of him. He told him he was beautiful, made him feel loved. But James was nearly twenty-eight, over a decade older than Alexander. He knew what he was doing when he guilt tripped him into doing things a teenage boy should never have to do, especially for an adult man. He would kiss his nose and tell him how wonderful he was before sinking to his knees and performing acts Alexander did not want but did not protest, as he did not know how. He craved love and affection, and James gave it to him. But there was a price.

Alexander told himself he loved him, told himself he deserved everything he did not want. Deep down he knew he didn’t, but if he tried hard enough he could shove that thought into the back of his mind and pretend it didn’t exist. He deserved it, it was his fault James liked him like this. His breeches were too tight, his hair was too soft. 

His first time hurt like hell. James told him oil wasn’t necessary, that if he really loved him he’d take him how he was. He peppered kisses on his face, his collarbone, his chest. His mouth circled lower and lower, and Alexander whispered many soft no's. He didn’t want this, but James wouldn’t stop. He wanted his first time to be with a man he loved, not someone he felt bound to because he showered him with attention.

And then there was Cecilia Peters. When he left James he would go to her, cry into her beautiful bosom while she stroked his hair and told him it wasn’t his fault. She was his comfort, his rock, his everything. The only thing that kept him grounded, the only reason he didn’t put a bullet through his head. He loved her more than anything. Even in his old age he could recall every detail of her appearance, from her chestnut brown hair to her chocolate eyes. The feel of her soft hands on his bare chest, they way she held him close while he cried himself to sleep. Her musical laugh, her voice like honey and milk. Everything about her was magical, everything about her made his heart jump.

He was heartbroken when she died. It was a freak accident on the day she turned seventeen, an incident with a horse and cart. He screamed, he screamed so loud everyone on that damned island must have heard. He wrote poetry, he wrote odes, he took up reading and writing and other methods of coping, some healthier than others. 

James grew merciless. He raped Alexander almostly nightly, he would trace his fingers over the cuts that had begun crisscrossing his inner thighs. He’d ask what they were and Alexander would lay there, unresponsive. He was desperate to get out, but at the same time terrified. He had nothing besides the money James allowed him, absolutely nothing. But he had to get out, he had to before he did something he wouldn’t be alive to regret.

Somehow, somehow he got out. He would never be sure how, but he did it. He got out and got to the mainland, went to college and got an education. Valedictorian, the smartest boy of his age group. But his age group wasn’t his actual age group. He lied so it wouldn’t be weird, he lied because what fifteen year old wants to go to school with a nineteen year old. And he was ashamed. Ashamed of his birthplace, of the fact that years of sexual abuse had kept him from getting a normal education at a normal time. So he said he was seventeen, because that sounded much more reasonable and maybe, just maybe if he pretended hard enough it would come true.

He kissed Robert Troup once, under the beautiful night sky at King’s College. It was impulsive, stupid, and could have ruined their friendship. Robert had pulled back quickly, an expression of surprise on his face, before running away and locking the door of their dorm. Alexander spent that night outside, under the same stars he had tried to kiss his best friend under not an hour before.

The war was nasty. Everyone was dying and screaming and bleeding and there was no way out, no way for him to escape. John Laurens started as a friend, as a person he told everything to and would die for if the situation arose. But one night it escalated and he ended up with John pinned to the cot, touching him and kissing him and loving him senseless. John stopped him before it could escalate further, before either of them started shedding clothes.

They didn’t speak for awhile after that. John was scared of his father, Alexander was scared of falling in love. But eventually he came back, showing up outside Alexander’s room at ten o’clock on a Sunday evening. He let himself in and shut and locked the door behind him. Alexander had looked up from where he sat on his bed, writing a letter to his brother. John walked over wordlessly and pressed a silent kiss to Alexander’s willing lips, and when he didn’t pull away he kissed him again.

They made love that night, a soft, gentle act that neither of them would grow to regret. When John came across the faded scars on the inside of his thighs he kissed each and every one of them, both knowing and not wanting to ask what they were. They fell asleep tangled together in Alexander’s bed, a situation that would become more and more common in the coming months.

It was late December when John found out. He had been straddling Alexander’s lap, kissing him everywhere his mouth could reach. He nipped at his neck before pulling away to examine the growing red mark it left, and leaned down to soothe it with his soft lips. It was when he whispered a soft “mine” that Alexander threw him off and pushed him away, fear glistening in his eyes. When John asked what was wrong he merely whimpered and hid his face with his hands, a blatant sign of fear. Eventually John was able to coax it out of him, his trauma and the story of James and Cecilia and everything that had been haunting him for the past months, and he made sure to never say anything of that sort again. Alexander was his own person, he belonged to nobody. 

And then he found out about John’s wife. It was in a letter to his father, something about a Martha and a Frances and a family. Alexander knew he wasn’t supposed to go through the mail of other soldiers, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself. It was amusing, reading into their lives and learning of the loves they left behind in New Jersey and brothers that had chosen the British over their family. He had brought it up to John simply, casually, as if it were just an ordinary conversation - “so who’s this Martha?” - and John’s eyes had grown wide. He swore he had no intention of hurting Alexander, that Martha and Frances were just a mistake from his youth. But Alexander took it personally, as he did most things.

Elizabeth Schuyler and her piercing black eyes was not what he needed. She was a good Christian girl, the kind of person who would most definitely turn him in if she knew about his dabblings with men. He didn’t love her, no, but he did care about her. Enough to marry her, enough to let her bear and birth his children. When he bedded her he’d think of Cecilia, as after she died he promised himself he’d never sleep with another woman. But that just wasn’t possible, so he resigned himself to the belief that as long as he thought of her she’d be okay with it.

John was livid. He said that just because he was married did not mean Alexander had to go out and get married too, that it pained him to know his love was bedding other people. But Alexander did not care, he said it was about time he settle down with a wife and a family. They did not make love that night, instead they stayed awake in each other’s arms, reminiscing of a time when they could live and love and be happy together in a society that would accept them.

He died in the summer heat of August, leaving Alexander alone and broken yet again. He cried and burned their letters, hoping that if he erased all evidence of their relationship it wouldn’t hurt as bad. But it still stung, it always would. When his son died his first thought would be that of Philip meeting John, of his past lover meeting the son he’d heard so much about.

Alexander was alone with Eliza the night he told her. He told her everything, of Theodore and Sarah and James and Cecilia and Robert and John. Their names, the color of their eyes, the reason he loved them. His first love, his second, his fake love, his true, his puppy crush, and whatever the hell John was. She said she may not agree with what he did, but she loved him all the same and would not judge him because of it.

Maria Reynolds wasn’t supposed to happen. She was a fuck up, a mistake, and every other word you could think of to call what he had with her. He was a sad, broken man and she was a sad, broken woman. They fit together well, but their relationship could never work in the long run. They were too similar, they both had abuse on their list of reasons they wanted to get away. And not to mention, they were both married. 

She would show up on his doorstep in her dress of faded red and he’d take her to bed, but only half the time would they have sex. The other half they would cry together, relive their traumas to someone who actually understood, someone who could actually comfort them in a way that made sense to them. But then James Reynolds showed up and she was gone, his last support system taken from him by an angry husband who hit her and called her names and fucked her without her consent.

In the end, he had nothing but his Eliza. She didn’t speak of his affair, no matter how much he could tell it hurt her. She was quiet, she kissed him goodnight as usual. But she was as broken as she was. Only broken people have the power to break people, after all.


End file.
